Research as intellectual property: influences within the university.

Abstract

If language changes to accommodate new experience, it is not difficult to deduce the type of experience which underlies the term property. Fifteen years ago, there were few parts of the academic world where that term, if indeed it was known at all, would have been viewed as anything other than alien and unwelcome. Today, the idea that the products of the mind constitute a kind of property-and valuable property at thatis part of common campus discourse, and questions about that particular kind of property have become vexing and controversial issues of academic policy. For U.S. universities, the emergence of intellectual property as an important source of real economic value raises questions of two kinds. The first, and most important, is how to prevent the effort to capture that value from undermining the central commitment of universities to the freest sharing of the fruits of knowledge acquisition. The second is how best to share the value that is created by research among those who are entitled to a portion of it: namely, the faculty, who are the creators of knowledge; universities, which are hosts to its creation; and government and industry, which are its principal sponsors. This article addresses those two issues-or, more accurately, clusters of issues. The first of them, the protection of open scientific communication, is by no means new to universities, although contemporary experience has produced some novel manifestations. The second, how to distribute the economic value created by knowledge, is new, at least in its scope and in the size of the economic stakes at issue. American universities are among the most permeable of social institutions. We have made them into instruments to fulfill purposes as diverse as training for the agricultural and industrial revolutions, curing cancer, giving life to a national commitment to equal opportunity without regard to race or ethnic origin, and, most recently, helping to repair the competitive disadvantage that America suffers in comparison to some of its main trading partners. On the whole, universities have flourished as they have responded to such high expectations. The willingness to respond has both produced intellectual stimulation and called forth resources that might otherwise not have been available. At times, too, the response to society's wishes has led to an unhealthy stretching of the fabric of the university, to assuming responsibilities that are not properly academic, and to adopting practices that are inconsistent with academic norms. The recent rebirth of mutual interest between universities and industry calls this history to mind. For reasons that will be discussed shortly, we may expect universities to respond to-indeed, even to encourage-that interest, and we may expect industry to respond. We may also expect problems in the relationship, and if history is a guide, some of those problems will test the ability of universities to respond to social need without relinquishing those values that define them as institutions. Chief among those values is that of openness. Although the value is an abstraction, the practices Robert M. Rosenzweig is President of the Association of American Universities, 1 Dupont Circle, N. W., Washington, DC 20036. * This essay was produced with the support of funds from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities under NSF Grant RII-8309874.